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The Top 10 Guitars For Girls are rated and reviewed over at Electric Guitar Review. I don't really get the author's beef at Gibson and Squier for dumbing down their girl guitars by equipping them with less control knobs. I always thought that a single volume knob (and pickup selector) is all you really need. Tone controls on guitars are usually just a big waste of time. Who really uses them? Perhaps what Gibson and Squier are saying in reducing the knob quota on their girl guitars is that women are more practical and less likely to be impressed by a vast array of virtually useless controls.

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Pete Townshend: "I will never smash a guitar up again!": The 61-year-old has now decided this trademark has become a cliché, and he has decided to auction the last guitar he smashed up to raise money for the victims of Hurricane Katrina in America's Gulf Coast region. Fans can enter a lottery on website InTheAttic.tv to buy the shattered instrument, signed by Townshend, that the guitarist trashed onstage in Japan in 2004. Here's the video of that final guitar smash:

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Also up for auction at Cooper Owen is the remnants of one of Pete Townshend's smashed Gibson SGs. I always feel sorry for guitars like that - if it got into my hands I'd say bugger the historical significance and give it to a luthier to rebuild.

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Check out the girls of Epiphone: "When most people think of a guitarist, they picture a guy standing feet spread apart with low slung Les Paul and a mean guitar face. But there's much more to our cult club than the shredding guy with a beard or gotee. In fact, some of the finest players we know are not guys at all. Women players are popping up in all genres of music and we are proud to be associated with many of them."

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The Tritare: A guitar with Y-shaped strings: read all about it over on Music Thing. Personally, I think it's pretty daft, although I appreciate the desire to experiment with ideas such as these. For the rest of you interested in getting some of these kind of sounds, get yourselves a resonator.

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Iner Souster and the Experimental Instruments He Lives With: This is a fascinating blog showing the creations of this possibly quite eccentric Canadian guy and his even more eccentric instruments! As he says: "This is a collection of instruments that I have been building since the year 2000. Some of them are functional, some just plain suck."

They include a few guitar-like stringed insturments... well, vaguely guitar-like, I suppose. There's a fair few other non-stringed instruments too.

They all look fantastic from an artisitic point of view. How musical or playable they are is another matter that I couldn't possibly comment on!(Via Fretboard Journal)